>Date: Wed, 04 Dec 2002 08:23:34 -0600 >From: "R.A. Cantrell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>What I gather is that the 9600 is a good machine and that I should have >paid attention to the discussions of cache disabling if I am thinking of >upgrading a 9600 to a G3 cpu. Is there any benefit in having one of the fast >300-350 9600's if you are going to upgrade it? Will the 200 Dual Processor >board let you use two G3 cards? (is this real dumb?) What is the best card >or remedy for the fact that the 9600 has no video in/out panel? The 300 - 350 MHz 9600s are officially (by Apple) known as the 9600 Enhanced to distinguish them from the 233 MHz and slower 9600s. Unofficially, they're known as the Kansas 9600 or Mach V 9600. The 9600 Enhanced has a different motherboard than the 9600 or the 9500. The main differences are that the 9600 Enhanced motherboard has no soldered down cache and has new ROMs. The lack of a soldered down cache means that you do not need to seek a method of disabling the cache if you install a G3 or G4 upgrade. This is not as important as it once was, because most (all?) G3 and G4 upgrades now come with software which will disable the motherboard cache for you. On the older 9600 motherboard which is nearly identical to the 9500 motherboard (I think only the power supply connectors are different) you can disable the motherboard cache by removing resistor R31, which is physically near the cache chips. The cache chips are in the bottom front (left front) of the motherboard. The main advantage of the new ROM is that it will allow you to enable Speculative Processing while using a G3 or G4 upgrade without compatibility problems. Early machines pretty much need to disable Speculative Processing or face instability problems. These problems are most acute with Adaptec SCSI adapters installed and with Retrospect software. Enabling Speculative Processing gives you a few percentage points improvement in CPU performance and having it properly implemented in ROM may protect from some data corruption issues. Note that you can solve the Speculative Processing issue by installing a ROM module bearing the Kansas ROMs into any of the x500 and x600 machines (and probably the 7200 and Power Computing machines as well). Jeff Walther -- PCI-PowerMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- Sonnet & PowerLogix Upgrades - start at $169 | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> PCI-PowerMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/pci-powermacs.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive:<http://www.mail-archive.com/pci-powermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
